Cleary Boulevard Decision Pleases Residents

September 8, 1989|By KATHLEEN KERNICKY, Staff Writer

PLANTATION -- After a long fight over plans to build a four-lane road through one of the city`s last rural neighborhoods, the Broward County Planning Council has agreed not to extend Cleary Boulevard through Plantation Acres.

The planning council said last week it will defer to the wishes of city officials and residents and delete the extension and widening of Cleary Boulevard, or Northwest Eighth Street, from Hiatus Road west to Flamingo Road.

Residents in Plantation Acres said running a four-lane street through the horse community of estate homes would have destroyed its rural character and attracted traffic from the heavy development west of Flamingo Road.

In the county plan, which designates right of way for road dedication and paves the way for future development, a four-lane Cleary Boulevard was to extend west from University Drive, past Hiatus and Flamingo roads to Northwest 136th Avenue.

Now it will stop at Hiatus Road, where Plantation Acres begin, and pick up at Flamingo Road, running west to Northwest 136th Avenue.

By deleting it from the county plan, the city will retain control over the road, city planner Rob Walsh said.

``By taking it off the traffic way plan, it reduces the chances of it ever being more than a two-lane road to practically zero,`` Walsh said. ``It`s now totally at the city`s discretion.``

Cleary Boulevard begins at University Drive and runs west. In the Acres, Northwest Eighth Street is a two-lane residential road between Northwest 112th and 124th Avenues and does not connect to Flamingo or Hiatus roads.

``That`s the way we want it to stay,`` said Mary Bankston, president of the Plantation Acres Homeowners` Association, which began opposing the road extension two years ago.

Bankston said the road and heavier traffic posed a problem to several neighborhoods, including the Acres, Jacaranda, Lago Mar and New Orleans homes.

``We have always been worried that Eighth Street would go through and destroy the aesthetics,`` Bankston said. ``That would have destroyed the Acres. We`ve been scared to death. I`m very, very happy with the county.``

The road`s traffic would be generated by a regional mall called Sawgrass Mills and industrial, office and residential developments being built west of Flamingo Road.

Walsh said the city also feared that more traffic would be emptied onto congested University Drive if Cleary Boulevard was opened up.

Elizabeth Ledet, county transportation planner, said the county was worried that Sunrise and Broward boulevards would not be able to handle additional traffic unless Cleary was lengthened.

But studies showed that between Flamingo and Hiatus roads, the new road would have only attracted about 4,000 cars a day, Ledet said.

The county did retain in its plan the link between Flamingo and 136th Avenue. ``That area is going to be intensely developed,`` Ledet said. ``Initially, it was anticipated this would be residential. When Interstate 595, I-75, the Sawgrass Expressway and the transportation links came in, the area was switched to industrial development.``